The Collection Completion Complex
by Quartertofive
Summary: Leslie is back, and Leslie likes to be thorough about things. Shamy.
1. Chapter 1

Leslie bought her coffee and pastry and started across the cafeteria, planning to eat in the lab.

"Leslie! You're back!" someone called out. _Great. Chitchat. _

She sighed and looked around, and then had to shake her head to dislodge the slight feeling of deja-vu.

Hofstader, Wolowitz, Koothrapali and Cooper were sitting just a few feet away. Leslie scanned them wearily, her eyeballs jangling slightly from having to look at Howard's plaid shirt next to Raj's argyle vest. Across from them, Sheldon and Leonard were doing almost equally badly, albeit in bigger color blocks. Was that...it was. Leonard was still wearing the same hoodie he'd lived in when they were dating, over five years ago.

"Hi guys. How's it going?" She paused for effect then nodded at Sheldon. "Dumbass."

He scowled at her, lost for words.

"Good, good," Leonard grinned. "How was teaching in Singapore?"

Leslie shrugged. "The heat was a nice preface to the winter doing research in Antarctica, which was a good counterpoint to the six months I just spent running a beach bar outside Antananarivo. A bit of a lost weekend, that."

Sheldon snorted. "Like your entire career, perhaps?"

"Oooh, burn," Leslie said. "I think I would have stayed there, but I woke up one morning, untangled myself from the lithe bodies that had shared my bed that night, and as I stepped out onto the veranda, the way the sunlight scattered on the water led to an epiphany in quantum optics." She sighed. "I tried, but I could no longer stifle the agonies of my intellect in the simple pleasures of sand, sun and sex. So, yes, i'm back."

There were a few seconds of silence.

"I just got back from the North Sea, with the Stephen Hawking expedition," Leonard said.

"Right, I kept up," she said sympathetically. "No supporting evidence for the hypothesis, huh?"

Leonard looked down into his salad. "We're still going through the data."

"Good luck with that." Leslie toasted them with her coffee and left, shaking her head. It almost made her feel good, to think there was one thing in life that would never shift under her feet, no matter how far she went or how long it took her to come back. Even if that thing was four guys at a cafeteria table.

* * *

"I have got to tap that." Raj's eyes were locked on Leslie Winkle's pert, retreating ass.

Howard snorted. "Like you have a chance with Leslie Winkle."

"Both of you did," Raj said, looking from Howard to Leonard.

Leonard's eyebrows climbed above the rim of his glasses. "She went through us both like a hippopotamus through a kindergarden."

Raj nodded knowingly. "That's because you're both hopeless romantics. Leslie was too much woman for you. Me, I'll nail her like a sign to the wall and leave her wanting more."

"Right, you're the love-em-and-leave-em macho Casanova at this table," Howard said.

"Process of attrition, gentlemen," Raj said.

Leonard looked up, considered Howard and then Sheldon, then shrugged. "He might be right. But you still need to actually get the date."

"I can talk to her now." Raj thought about it. "Really, you've been lucky all these years I couldn't talk to women. You'd never have gotten anywhere."

He straightened the collar of his shirt, stood, and strolled away after Leslie in a poor imitation of a louche swagger.

"Sheldon, you gonna drink that water?" Howard asked.

"Why wouldn't I?" Sheldon looked up in confusion.

"We're going to need something to pour on him when he comes back here in a minute, crashed and burned."

"Now, that's not a certainty." Sheldon raised his fork to make a point. "Leslie Winkle has always shown a tendency towards sexual promiscuity. I don't see why Raj is a worse prospect than either of you."

Leonard met Howard's eyes for that uncomfortable moment when one man is forced to recognize another as a sexual being.

Fortunately, it was cut short by Raj, dashing back in to the cafeteria and coming to a skidding halt by their table. "Tonight," he panted, grinning like a fool. "Eight. Coffee. Leslie."

"Huh," Howard said. "Sheldon was right about a woman."

* * *

Leslie waited for Raj at the entrance to Leonard's building. No surprise, to find Raj still spending more time here than at home. If only she could find someone to bet that Howard was up there too.

The door opened and she turned, expecting Raj, but it was a bespectacled woman in a striped cardigan. Sheldon Cooper followed her, a few steps behind.

"Leslie," he said. "Raj will be down in a minute for your date."

The woman peered at Leslie. "Have fun," she declared. Her voice seemed to be trying very hard to convey friendliness. "Raj is a swell fellow." Her body language, on the other hand, suggested a more analytical curiosity. _Like a dissectionist. _

"Don't worry, I'm going to show him a time he'll never forget," Leslie said.

"I'm sure he'll try very, very hard." Sheldon said and started down the street. "Come on, Amy, we'll be late for the movie."

The woman - Amy - shrugged, shot her a grin, and caught up with Sheldon. They walked away together, already deep in some argument Leslie couldn't bother listening to. Who would ever have thought the guys would make another friend?

"Hi Leslie!" Raj finally appeared, grinning blissfully. He wore a mustard colored blazer instead of his usual jacket and smelled like an accident in the perfume section of a Duty Free, but otherwise looked exactly like he did at work. _Ah, an eager nerd. _Leslie was in her element. Being back here wasn't so bad.

"Hi."

"So, there's this great little new cafe, just around the corner, they have this chai-"

"How about we just head straight to your place?" Leslie suggested. She didn't really want coffee.

"Straight to...you mean...that is..."

"I mean sex."

Raj stared at her with an expression precisely half-way between terror and desire, for exactly four seconds. "Ok, let's go." He offered her his arm, and Leslie shrugged and took it. Why not, if he liked that sort of thing?


	2. Chapter 2

Raj felt like he couldn't talk to women again. He had things to say, but the words tangled together like giant squid in the depths of his chest, then brutally wrapped their long sucking tentacles around one another's squishy necks and perished together in a tortured orgy of blood and ink before any trace of them could rise up to his lips.

Of course, he could talk to women now, but sitting on the couch, watching Leslie pace naked around his living room it occured to him that she might be a new species of person all together, and he would have to overcome an even-more-selective mutism to communicate.

She stopped, jotted down an equation on the back of a pizza menu she had pulled off his fridge and then turned to him.

"You know, I don't think we've ever really talked before, have we?" she said.

"We still haven't talked," Raj said. He tried not to visibly sigh with relief. Not mute, just hopelessly intimidated. He could live with that. "We just had sex."

Leslie frowned. "I said 'take your pants off.' You said, 'ok.'"

He didn't think that counted, but what did he know? "I used to not be able to talk to women. Like, at all." He looked around for his clothes, careful not to let the blanket slide off. It was all very well for her to strut her stuff - her perfect, perfect stuff - around, but he was shy.

"At all?" Leslie leaned over the back of the couch to look at him curiously. From this angle, he mostly had a great view of her breasts. Her perfect, perfect breasts. _Keep breathing, Rajesh. Keep breathing. _

"Not a word, unless I had a drink."

"Huh." Leslie nodded. "You would think that I would have noticed someone I worked with for five years had never said a word to me."

Raj shrugged. "Don't worry, I fade into the background."

"Oh, good, so it's you, not me."

"Why is that good?"

"I've been told I can be callous."

"No, not at all! You're...you're straightforward and refuse to participate in a patronizing cultural norm that demands women be sweet and submissive."

Leslie seemed taken aback by that. "That's a very nice way of looking at it."

"I admire the uncompromising forcefullness of your personality," he lied. It terrified him.

"Huh." She shrugged and came around the couch to look down at him. "Another round?"

"Around of what-oh!" _Yes_ seemed to be the correct answer. Actually, the twitch of his cock informed him that it was definitely the correct answer. "Yes. Naturally. Always. You know me."

"Stop talking," Leslie said.

She pushed him back and climbed into his lap in single fluid movement. It seemed like there were things that mattered here, things he should be saying, but the feel of her nipples, hard against the palms of his hands, was too deliriously good. Raj kissed his way down her neck, her shoulder, her breasts. He could feel her response in her hands on his back and the tiny, tense shifts of her body against his. Her teeth closed on his ear, gentle, and then not so gentle.

He pulled away, caught her around the hips and twisted them both around until she was on her back, under him. Her skin was flushed and her breathing short, but her face was composed and oddly removed from the moment. _I can make her moan, _he thought. _I can make her..._

Before the thought was quite complete, Leslie pulled his face down to her breasts and wrapped her legs insistently around his waist. _Make her scream my name,_ that was it, that was how it was supposed to go, but that much contact, skin to skin, shorted something in his brain. Her fingers closed around his penis and he forgot. He forgot about going down on her. He forgot about about making her scream his name. Possibly, he forgot his name. The world crashed down to a hot bubble of sensation. The Big Cruch Theory in action, rushing towards collapse and singularity at the speed of light.

His cock in her hands, and then in her. Fingernails digging into his shoulder. Her breath on his chest. Mostly his cock again. The rhythm of the thing. It felt amazingly good. Actually, unbelievably good. Forward and back, a little up and down. Still his cock. He needed this, so badly. These moments that weren't cold and weren't lonely.

He came with a bang and then with a whimper. His apartment swam slowly back into focus. Floor, couch, tv, doodads - they had gone away for a while there. Leslie pushed him away and rolled off the couch smoothly. She stretched like a cat, supple and satisfied. She was satisfied, right? He had meant...something. He forgot. It was just that he had needs. He was a man and he had needs. That was it.

"Leslie?" She would tell him if it wasn't good, right? That he could count on from Leslie Winkle, for sure.

"You were amazing," she said. It sounded like she was lying, maybe, but everything Leslie said sounded like she was lying. Maybe. It was just the way she talked, that ironic monotone. "I'm going to take a shower."

"Now?" He could do other things to her. Make it up to her. Make her...

She shrugged. "Yup."

It took her less than ten minutes to shower, and less than that to get dressed.

"I'll call you." Raj asked while she tied her shoes, perched on the end of the couch where they had made love, of a sort.

"You don't have to," she said.

"I don't?"

Leslie stood, shrugged one last time, and opened the door for herself. "I might call you," she said brightly. "I probably won't, but I might. This was nice. Until next time."

She was gone.

Raj got up numbly to lock the door behind her. Out of the corner of his eye, the screensaver clock on his laptop informed him it was just shy of half past nine o'clock, pm.

"Huh," he considered the situation. "Twice in an hour."

All told, it was possible to have a worse night.


End file.
